A vicious smear attack on Alex Jones and his websites launched by the ADL in the aftermath of the Pittsburgh police shootings which attempted to classify Infowars as an outlet for “hate speech” has been discredited after the ADL’s own website admitted that Richard Poplawski held views that opposed those of the Texas radio talk show host.

Stories claiming that Poplawski was influenced by Alex Jones, Infowars and Prison Planet originally appeared Sunday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Raw Story. Neither of these news organizations attempted to speak with us before claiming the link and Raw Story later issued a retraction and removed us from their original piece [3]altogether after we questioned the sloppy nature of their writer Muriel Kane’s hit piece.

The Raw Story piece now omits any mention of Prison Planet, Infowars or Alex Jones, stating, “Editor’s note: RAW STORY regrets an early version of this article was published without an editor’s approval. This article has been revised and edited.”

Liberal blogs and websites have grossly inflated the shootings out of context to claim that the tragic events were not as a result of a domestic dispute gone horribly awry, but as some kind of retribution launched deliberately by Poplawski borne out of his fierce support for the second amendment and interest in conspiracy websites. They have employed classic guilt-by-association tactics to attack gun rights activists in an attempt to discredit the very real agenda on behalf of the Obama administration to curtail the second amendment.

Forget the snarky blog entries at Little Green Footballs and Daily Kos — the attack against Alex Jones is now a main course diet for the Anti-Defamation League. “Web sites like the neo-Nazi Stormfront forums and the anti-government conspiracy Infowars site fueled [Richard Poplawski's] racist, anti-Semitic, and conspiratorial mindset,” the ADL claims in the white supremacy section of its website.[4]

The ADL wrote the following about the Pittsburgh shooter and a post in the comment section of Infowars:

“One of Poplawski’s favorite places for such conspiracy theories was the Web site of the right-wing conspiracy radio talk show host Alex Jones. Poplawski visited the site, Infowars, frequently, shared links to it with others, and sometimes even posted to it. One of his frustrations with the site, though, was that it didn’t focus enough on the nefarious roles played by Jews in all these conspiracies. “For being such huge players in the endgame,” he observed in a March 29, 2009 posting to Infowars, “too many ‘infowarriors’ are surprisingly unfamiliar with the Zionists.” Another time he was more hopeful, noting that “racial awareness is on the rise among the young white population.”

A search of the comments section on Infowars, Prison Planet, and the Prison Planet forum produces zero matches for Poplawski’s handle, “Braced for Fate.” A search of his name also produces no results. However, a Google search of the quote used in the ADL article produces a comment posted to Infowars that matches the one in the ADL article under the handle “P O Status” with an email containing “Richp,” the name cited by the media.

This undated photo released by the Pittsburgh Police shows Richard Poplawski.

The ADL claims Poplawski or somebody using his handle posted “frequently” on the Infowars comments. In fact, “P O Status” left three short posts, thus making him an infrequent commenter at best.

Comments on Infowars are open to the public and until very recently contained no restrictions and very little moderation. Considering this, it should be obvious to the ADL and others that Alex Jones and Infowars do not support the views expressed in all comments. Obviously, the ADL has an axe to grind and does not find it objectionable to lead its readers to unwarranted conclusions — that Alex Jones operates a racist and white supremacist website. Even a cursory examination of Alex Jones’ comments and those of the writers on his websites reveals the exact opposite — Alex Jones has on numerous occasions denounced racism.

Even if we are to take the ADL’s accusation at face value, despite it being backed up with no hard evidence whatsoever, the attachment to their own press release admits that the nature of Poplawski’s statements on our website comment boards was antagonistic towards Alex Jones, Infowars and Prison Planet for not subscribing to his warped political world view. How on earth can that be taken as meaning that Poplawski was influenced by Alex, Infowars or Prison Planet when Poplawski expressed his explicit disagreement with our political stance?

There’s no doubt that Poplawski was a neo-nazi and a white supremacist who held distasteful opinions. The fact that such views are a complete 180 from what we write about every day, and the fact that the ADL itself admits Poplawski expressed disagreement with our material, debunks the ridiculous notion that his shooting rampage was remotely influenced by anything he may have read on our websites.

This is not the first time that the ADL has attempted to classify Alex Jones and his websites as “hate” material. Several years ago they attempted a similar stunt and were later forced to back down and retract their statements after Jones sent them a letter informing them of their slanderous accusations which were libel.

It is also noteworthy that clear evidence points to the ADL having had a significant influence in the writing of the controversial MIAC report[5], which equated Ron Paul supporters, libertarians and people who display political bumper stickers with domestic terrorists and hate groups. The report later had to be completely withdrawn after numerous different parties threatened lawsuits on the back of the report’s ludicrous assertions that third party political candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin were somehow tied in with white supremacists and people like OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh and Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph.

Over at the Daily Kos site operated by the former Reaganite and documented wannabe CIA employee [6]Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the knives are coming out in a big way against Alex Jones. “In the end, I believe the mainstream media needs to press hard on people like Glenn Beck, Don Black (Stormfront) and Alex Jones (PrisonPlanet) to discuss how the poisonous environments they’ve created and the hate they spew fuel people like Richard Paplowski,” writes a contributor with the handle fcvaguy[7]. “The mainstream media should also educate Americans about these hate sites, because my guess is most of America knows nothing about them.”

Prison Planet and Infowars, of course, are anything but hate sites as regular readers know. Daily Kos has long been in the business of such absurd political reductionism and guilt by association, even though Prison Planet and Infowars are not even remotely associated with Stormfront or its brand of racist ideology. In many ways, Daily Kos is a website peddling the worst kind of mean-spiritedness with its sharply divisive Democrat partisan politics.

We vehemently advise the Daily Kos, the ADL and the other blogs who have jumped on this fallacious and slanderous bandwagon in an attempt to smear Alex Jones, Infowars and Prison Planet to follow the example of Raw Story and issue retractions. Let it be on record that we are currently considering what further action to take should retractions not be forthcoming.

[3] Raw Story later issued a retraction and removed us from their original piece : http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Pittsburgh_shooter_was_fan_of_rightwing_0405.html

[4] the ADL claims in the white supremacy section of its website.: http://www.adl.org/learn/extremism_in_the_news/White_Supremacy/poplawski%2Breport.htm?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_the_News

[5] clear evidence points to the ADL having had a significant influence in the writing of the controversial MIAC report: http://www.infowars.com/modern-militia-movement-report-written-with-adl-assistance/